Katherine Syverson has spent 40 years in manufacturing with a variety of businesses. To say she knows and understands the risks and needs of the field would be an understatement.
Now, as the Environment, Health and Safety Director at Life Fitness, the umbrella company for six fitness brands, Katherine uses the knowledge and experience from her manufacturing days to inform her policy practices.
“We use a lot of lean manufacturing tools and Six Sigma concepts in safety, just like we would in quality or operations or efficiencies,” Katherine explains on this episode of the No Accident podcast, presented by TRUCE. “We use those same tools and mindsets and kind of that continuous improvement mindset to constantly get better in the workplace around working in a safe manner.”
At Life Fitness, Katherine develops and integrates company-wide standardized, proactive EHSS programs and practices through collaborative leadership. In fact, she boasts about Life Fitness’s leaders’ dedication to safety.
“We had a global leadership meeting this past week and talked about safety as really being a highlight of continuous improvement and performance this year,” she says. “The CEO talked about the fact that safety is in everybody's basket. It's for everybody to be participating in affecting change around safety. So I see not only my own leadership but the leadership within the organization really being authentic.”
According to Katherine, it is truly in leaders’ best interests to invest in safety as a process flow because it is just as much an investment in employees as it is in the company’s future.
“[Safety] is not a cost savings; it's a cost avoidance. … [That means] being able to think about it more as a business practice — like how can I make an improvement on the safety side of things that can ultimately affect business efficiencies and quality metrics?”
Featured Guest
👉 Name: Katherine Syverson
👉 What she does: As the Environment, Health and Safety Director at Life Fitness, Katherine develops and integrates company-wide standardized, proactive EHSS programs and practices through collaborative leadership.
👉 Company: Life Fitness
👉 Key quote: “[Safety] is not a cost savings; it's a cost avoidance.”
👉 Where to find her: LinkedIn | Facebook
Safe Takes
⚠️ Safety shouldn’t exist in a silo. Katherine emphasizes the impact of safety on all other aspects of business — it’s a business practice that affects efficiency and quality metrics.
⚠️ Safety is a process flow. Thinking about safety from a mindset of needing continuous improvement helps to constantly raise workplace standards and conditions.
⚠️ The key to a safe workplace is having everyone involved. It’s not just leadership — safety requires commitment from every employee.
Resources
⛑️ Eaton Honors 2014 Stover Award — Awarded to Katherine Syverson for her volunteer work with the Boy Scouts of America, Eden Prairie Fire Department and Community Emergency Response Team.
⛑️ Environmental Health and Safety Services (EHSS) — Federal program and training resources for those in the field.
⛑️ Manufacturers Alliance — Providing peer-to-peer training and education in the manufacturing industry.
Top quotes from the episode:
“I really have to work hard at helping people understand why we're doing what we're doing and give them enough background so that they understand the why behind it and the critical nature.”
“[Safety] is not a cost savings; it's a cost avoidance. So really being able to think about it more as a business practice like how to make an improvement on the safety side of things that can ultimately affect business efficiencies and quality metrics. So safety isn't disconnected all by itself in its own silo.”
“We've really shifted in terms of how we look at injuries. Today, we look at it really more as a process flow. We use a lot of lean manufacturing tools and Six Sigma concepts in safety, just like we would in quality or operations or efficiencies. We use those same tools and mindsets and kind of that continuous improvement mindset to constantly get better in the workplace around working in a safe manner.”
“We recognize leading indicators rather than lagging indicators. … So you start measuring the things that create a more positive, more safe work environment. Now you're being more proactive rather than just being reactive.”
“We had a global leadership meeting this past week and talked about safety as really being a highlight of continuous improvement and performance this year. The CEO talked about the fact that safety is in everybody's basket. It's for everybody to be participating in affecting change around safety. So I see not only my own leadership but the leadership within the organization really being authentic.”
“Safety is about figuring out how to do things in a manner that doesn't create a level of risk that would have someone get hurt. It's understanding the nuts and bolts of what you do and how you do that in a deep enough way so that you can design risks and hazards out of what you do, because you think about the hierarchy of controls and the best way to do it is to completely eliminate it altogether.”